Step 3: Play With Fire...

WARNING: Red-hot metal will cause third degree burns before you can react. Black iron can (and often is) hot enough to burn. BE CAREFUL!

Start a fire in your forge.

After the fire is going and there is a red/orange hot area put the steel in. If you are starting with a strait piece of steel (lucky you!) you can skip this part...

I need to straiten out the spring piece. Heat an area to orange, move it to the anvil, and pound on what sticks up. For me, putting most of the round on the bottom works best. Once the metal cools to red or less, put it back in the fire. Metal moves where it's hot, and easiest where it's hottest.

WARNING: if the metal gets to hot (yellow to white) it will start to spark. This is the carbon burning out and the iron burning away. If you catch it quickly, you might not have done to much damage, otherwise cut the burnt piece off and start over. It is no longer high carbon and can never be hardened, so it's useless for a knife blade.

Step 4: Pounding Out a Knife, Pointing the Tip

You can't finish one part of the knife at a time, you have to work the whole thing slowly. If you hammer out the blade thin, then try to do the tang (handle) part, the thin blade will be ruined by to much heat while the handle won't be ready to work yet.

I'm starting with the blade end. I'll thin the steel some and start a point on the tip.

Step 5: And a Little Bit on the Handle Area

Now that I can see where the blade will be, I'm going to outline where the handle will be.

The metal will bend in funny ways. The art of blacksmithing is to figure out what is going to happen and work with it.

Save your heat. Don't put a crooked piece of metal in the fire, use the last (red) heat to get ready for the next trip to the anvil. Plan what you want to do BEFORE you put the metal back in the fire, don't waste heat figuring it out later. Hot metal moves under the hammer a lot easier than cold, and that anvil will suck the heat out of your metal super fast.

Push the tip of the knife past the hot spot in the forge. I'm trying to heat just the handle area. work it flat, then reheat. Take it out and put the top edge of the handle on the edge of the anvil and hit it with the hammer half on and half off the anvil.

You will notice that the rusty surface has mostly disappeared : )

Step 6: Thin It Out

Starting to look like a knife.

Thinning it out is easier said than done. The metal wants to move in strange ways. Take a look at some of the plans of attack.

Step 7: Cut It Off...

Time to cut the extra metal off. You could let the metal cool, then use a hacksaw or angle grinder, but I'm going to hot cut it. Remember when I used the edge of the anvil to 'dent' the knife? Well, if you keep going, you can cut all the way threw that way.

I'm going to use a piece of flat, sharped spring held in the vice. Line up where the cut will be and hit it with a hammer-don't go all the way threw! That will screw up the hammer face. Go part way threw, rotate and go part way threw again. Then, grab the knife with the tongs and bend or twist until it breaks off.

Step 8: Handle or Tang

Oops, cut the handle a little short. Oh well, design modification time. Instead of a full tang this one will be a rat-tail tang. I'm not impressed enough with the overall shape to try an make a looped blacksmith's handle.

Drawing out the handle is done by heating it up, hitting it a few times on one side, then rotate it 90 degrees and hit it a few times, rotate back and repeat.

Step 9: Hardening the Blade

If you are going slowly or want to use a file instead of a grinder, let the knife cool slowly and do your shaping now.

Me, I'm trying for the quick way : ) I'll get all the forge time done first, and use the grinder instead of a file to shape the knife.

To harden the knife, you have to get the WHOLE blade ORANGE. Not red, orange. To do things right, you should test the orange heat with a magnet because when the metal is ready to be hardened (it has to do with which crystaline shape the iron is in and how the carbon is held in that latice) it becomes non-magnetic. If the magnet doesn't stick, you are ready to quench.

Again, no helper with the camera, so no pics of the actual quench : P

After the quench, test the edge of the blade by trying to file it. If the file works, the metal wasn't hot enough, try again (I had to). If the file skates across without biting into the metal, you did it!

A word about quenching. In this non-critical piece, I'm using water for a fast quench. Some steels need a slower quench like oil or they get TOO hard and can break VERY easily, as in the stress of fast cooling will shatter them in the water or if you drop them or even twist them to much.

You should, after hardening, temper the steel. This take a little of the hardness out but puts some flexibility back in. Two hours in the oven at 400-500 degrees F. should do it. Otherwise you could try to flame temper it-make the edge shiny and heat it from the back just enough so that you get a little bit of color (yellow, purple is probably to far). This knife didn't harden enough for me to worry about it (the file bit a little after hardening, but not much).

Looking at the blade, it's a little warped. I could reheat it, pound it flat and try another hardening but it's getting late, I'm hungry and the warp isn't to bad so I'll leave it.

Step 10: Grind or File to Shape

QUICK passes on the grinder, only a second or two to do the whole edge. To long in one spot and you will heat the metal up to much and ruin the temper-take to much of the hardness out and it will never keep an edge.

I started by grinding the bump off the back (coarse grit wheel) and evening out the cutting edge (fine grit wheel). If your grinder has a grinding wheel and a wire brush, then just do what you can. After the rough shaping, I sharpened the blade. Keep dipping the blade in a bucket of water, it will help keep the metal cool. when you can see that the water has evaporated, dip it again.

Step 11: Finishing Up, Or, What's Left to Do

I need to grind off the rest of the fire scale (the black stuff) and put a handle on it.

I should have thought more about the balance of the blade across the handle, hammer out the dip in the back and maybe a bit of a false edge. The rat-tail tang is easier to put a handle on, you drill a hole in the handle a little smaller than the tang, heat the tang up and burn the hole the right size. Any extra tang that sticks out can be handled in a number of ways-bent over like a nail, cut the extra off or put a nut on it to keep the handle tight. A loop handle could have been done, heating the middle of the tang, then bending the end up like a U until the tip touches the base of the blade.

Total time, little more than an hour, not counting the bonfire : ) Probably another hour to grind off the rest of the scale (or soak it in vinegar for a day or so) and make a handle.

Comments

Good instructable! Some constructive criticism: first your going to have some trouble with that tang, not only because it is a lot lighter than the blade, creating balance problems, but also because its so thin, its likely to bend or even break in use; second if your steel does start to spark all is not lost, if the entire piece of steel is sparking, yeah scrap it, but is only a small part has sparked, get the metal red to orange hot and plunge it into charcoal powder and it fuses the carbon with the steel. Keep up the blacksmithing though.

Several problems-finding a vice powerful enough to do it cold or fast enough to do it before the heat is transferred to the vice. Either way, you end up letting a big tool do all the fun stuff, and you are just left with 'stock removal' (grinding off everything that doesn't look like your knife). Drop forging is what you are thinking of, stick a chunk of hot metal into a die that smashes it into shape. Of course the press starts at something like 100 grand plus another 20 thou for each different die...numbers are just guesses, but still several orders of magnitude more than I have for a hobby ; )

iv made some knives from the bottom of my dressar drawer( mid quality steel) and folded them over a few times. but after i forged they seem to rust more then before they were intrduced to heat. anyone know why? o and nice forge. alot better than mine.

Except that the steel used wasn't homogeneous to start with, and so had 'personality' that worked it's way in (more-so than the Indian wootz, or damascus steel) . Plus, there were several methods of layering the steel-the soft center surrounded by layers of harder steel or a hard edge applied (welded) to a softer back...and no folding after that...

Pavers are made from cement. Brick are made from fired clay. You can tell the difference by looking at the surface (sometimes you have to look closely), cement has a sandy and gravel texture, clay may have grog (pre-fired clay) in it but the texture is much smoother.

All three : ) I have a limited supply of (mineral) coal that I'll use when I don't want to keep feeding the fire, but mostly charcoal from old campfires (scout campfire pits where the fires aren't allowed to burn out are good sources) and wood.

I was reading your article on the war sword and how it was made with old leaf spring metal, to create swords/knives/daggers, and found it very interesting. I work for SDTruckSprings.com and being that we work with these, things all day. Its nice to see them put use rather just sit there at a scrap yard or in the wear house, and with customers always buying new leaf springs --- obviously they have old leaf springs; so we decided to write about a trend we've spotted on your site and show our customers what some are doing with their old leaf spring metal. So we wrote an article about it which you can find here. Hope you enjoy!

I'd like to know where you got your big piece of metal to use as an anvil. Anvils online seem to cost a lot of money, more than I particularly feel like spending, or else their reviews say they're crappy. And I can't very well go and saw a piece off the railroad track, I think it might cause some problems.

Until you KNOW which batch you are buying from, they are just ASO (Anvil Shaped Objects)-a few are good steel, most are soft cast iron. Steel will keep it's shape under hammer blows, iron will absorb the energy from the hammer and make everything twice as difficult while becoming dented and smooshed.

Yep, anvils cost a lot, and good ones tend to cost more. Scrounge, look where others get rid of stuff, think creatively. There's a professional knife maker (Lively Knives?) who makes his anvils out of a chunk of 4x4 steel and a bucket of cement. You should be able to do the same with a piece of crank shaft or solid axle. You might even be able to do the same with a sledge hammer head.

I think someone on Anvilfire said that an anvil should be at least 25 times heavier than the hammer you are using, and I've found that lighter anvils bounce around : ) For knives and swords, mostly you need a flat surface-use an angle grinder if you have to-and occasionally a chunk of something round or a rounded edge on your anvil to do some of the transition areas.

in response to wooginator: using a torch is not recommende as the tempering would happen too quickly. and yes you can use a sledge hammer as an anvil but better to cut a hole in a large stump slightly smaller than(like almost exact size)heat the one end with a torch hot enough to scorch the wood and pound the sledge in straight. using concrete would be noisier and would break almost immediately. if you want to see a sledge used as an anvil go to kukri house international and look at the process their smiths(kamis)use.

to have more control over the tempering process, heat a 1/4" thick rounded steel plate up to 430- 530 degrees farenheit and rub the body of the blade around until the polished edge of the blade begins to change colour.rubbung both sides of the piece around. dark "straw" yellow for knives and light purple for larger cutting implements like swords. when desired colour is reached quench along edge of blade(for single edge knives)and straight down for double edged pieces.(to prevent warping).

Guys I saw this on eBay and I plan making a replica of it - http://cgi.ebay.com/SMALL-HANDFORGED-THROWING-KNIFE-VERY-COOL-/170498516463?cmd=ViewItem&pt=Collectible_Knives&hash=item27b280e5ef Is it just the cam, or is the steel kinda blu-ish? If it is, can I give my steel that color?

Wow that was quick! I'll try... Also I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a car spring, I'll find a file instead. Are these these basically the same quality? I heard that files are perfect for making knives...

Also, would it be possible to use a blowtorch to accurately heat and then work specific areas? There wouldn't really be any difference assuming the torch can heat the steel to the proper temperature, right? Oh, and could I cut the head off a large enough sledge hammer and stick it in a bucket of cement and use that as an anvil? Sorry for all the questions, don't mean to be a bother. You just seem very knowledgeable on the subject.

A torch can work, but you loose a LOT of heat without something to reflect it back into your work (like the walls of a gas forge). Try making a bean can forge or even a pile of clay brick (NOT cement pavers) or fire brick to hold the heat around the metal.

If you use the sledge hammer, make sure the surface that's up is flat-ish, or your metal will have weird marks you'll have a hard time getting rid of : )

"Trauma" to the crystalline structure would be work hardening. If I wanted to do a one step quench with a softer spine (differential hardening) I would only quench the blade portion, leaving the spine out of the quench to cool more slowly. I suspect (from personal experience) that the time taken to try to cool the spine would cool the blade to much for proper hardening due to the difference in cross section (the thin blade cools faster than the spine, so it has to get into the quench FAST).

Missing the point. Wrapping this handle is pointless without bulking it up, hense needing the pin to hold the handle on.
You do know how the handle of a katana is held on, right? You aren't just pulling random bits off the internet without understanding the whole process, are you?

Wonders of Spell Check without reading ; )
Neither is a real katana. Look at the pics of the ura and omote sides-see the little hole? That's all that holds the handle on a real katana, a little peg in a little hole.

A real one with the different blade profiles at different points for different jobs (including Shiva's trident) and the full set of by-knives or just a bodge job that looks kinda sorta right?
Most of the work is realizing that anyplace that you beat thin is going to get longer, making the typical 'banana knife'. Some smiths start with an over bent blank that stretches to shape, others correct as they go along.

I'm a complete newbie to forging in general, so I apologize if these are ignorant questions.
1. Is there any substitute for an anvil?
2. How long does the metal usually spend in the forge before being hot enough to work with?
3. Is that a wood fire you're using in the pictures?
4. Is it safe to do this with no prior experience?
Thanks, and fantastic instructable!